 Coming up on D T and S Intel's new names and new plan to get back on top. Samsung doubles down on foldables and tech to stop sign stealing in baseball. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, July 27th, 2021 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from Studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane and I'm Roger Chang. The show's pretty soon because we have baseball in the show. We of course invited UK citizen and Bloomberg tech editor Nate Langston on the show. Welcome, Nate. Hello. Thank you. I'm here to bat away any questions about your baseball sports. Well done. Well, well done. We are going to talk about all kinds of good tech news. Of course, we were just talking to Nate about some hardware. Well, actually, we weren't talking much at all because he couldn't say anything, but he's also got a story about the Amazon hair salon in the works. All of that conversation plus tinting your eyelashes on good day internet. Become a member at patreon.com slash D T N S. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. So we know this is going to sound like deja vu, but it isn't Tuesday, July 27th, the actual day that nothing CEO Carl Paye actually officially announced the year one wireless earbuds open sales begin August 17th for ninety nine dollars. So that's it. No more. That's the real announcement. Yeah, that's you get that's it. All right, we got some other devices here. Real me is teasing a new device called the real me flash, the first Android phone to use magnetic wireless charging. So the company says it's a little different than Apple's MagSafe system for the iPhone 12 range and that real me will release a magnetic wireless charger called MagDart with charging speeds exceeding the 15 watts that MagSafe reaches. But that's not all in hardware news. Nokia's XR 20 is out running Android 11 with a large six point six seven inch display covered in gorilla glass of Victus, the strongest of the gorilla glasses built to military standard 810 H Nokia will also provide three years of software updates and an additional year of security updates to keep it safe and repair your glass within the first year if it breaks for free. Got a few social network policy changes to note as well. Instagram will default to private the accounts of those younger than 16 or 18, depending on their location. It'll also restrict advertisers from targeting these accounts and approve detection and blocking of adult accounts attempting to direct message kids accounts. Instagram uses automated tools to determine whether somebody is under 18 without requiring ID to be submitted. Facebook also said it will not allow advertisers to target users younger than 18 by interests or by activity on any of its platforms. Ads will only be allowed to target by age, gender and location for those users. And TikTok will now alert you if it thinks you're about to post a comment that might be unkind or otherwise harmful. And for live streams, the keyword filter expands to 200 words and both hosts and viewers can temporarily mute commenters and also delete comments. Apple patched a zero day impacting the I.O. mobile frame buffer for iOS, iPad, OS and Mac OS. Company says this vulnerability has been exploited in the wild. It did not elaborate. Pegasus, the update is available across iPhone 6S and later. All iPad Pros, iPad Air 2 and later iPad 5th gen onward iPad mini fours and up 7th gen iPod touches and Mac OS laptops and desktops. I joke when I cough. It's likely patching a vulnerability exploited by the jail breaking community. Or is it? We chat, known as Wixin in China and by far the biggest way that people communicate in the country, suspended new user registration in order to comply with relevant laws and regulations. We chat told Reuters that registration services will be restored in early August. The crackdown on tech companies in China is also driving out cryptocurrency companies Hubee Group, which runs the world's second largest exchange by volume, is now liquidating. It's mainland China entity Hubee says the business was non-operational. All right, let's talk about something else. Facebook is doing the new recall. It's like a car company. It's crazy. A little bit of a recall. Yeah. So Facebook has paused sales of the Oculus to to conduct a voluntary recall of the removable facial interface. So if you don't have an Oculus, there is when you put it on your face, there is a removable skin like, you know, kind of foam. Yeah, that that that you're going to have on your skin. If you don't have it on your skin, it's not fitting right. Some users had reported that skin irritation from the foam insert and the US Consumer Product Safety Commission issued an alert for those who do experience a reaction to stop using that insert and contact Facebook to receive a free silicone cover instead. Well, OK, so Oculus Quest Quest to sales will resume on August 24th with the silicone insert replacing the foam one. It might be an issue depending on what you're allergic to. At that time, Facebook will also retire the 64 gigabyte model and also sell a new one with 128 gigabytes for the same price. That's two hundred ninety nine dollars and offer a new model with 256 gigabytes of storage for three hundred ninety nine dollars. Facebook also told Upload VR. It received about fifty seven hundred reports from users in the US. CSPC estimates about four million interfaces are affected by the recall. Fifty seven hundred out of four million, not a lot. To me, that sounds like a typical allergy. And like you said, like you alluded to, Sarah, people have allergies to silicone. So if you're allergic to silicone, that silicone insert is not going to work for you. Yeah, I I may I don't have the Oculus Oculus to I have the original. But, you know, I use it a lot for exercising, certainly sweating a lot. And I wonder, I wonder how many folks listen, I know a silicone allergy is real. And if that is something that you're going to put on your face, it's not going to work. But I wonder how many folks might, you know, might be saying there's something wrong with this face mask because, you know, I'm hot and bothered when, you know, I have maybe been having fun, you know, playing Beat Saber for the last hour or two. I don't really know the answer. I do think that there we have a we have a long ways to go when it comes to everybody being clean and sanitized when it comes to this stuff. Because so what you're saying is there might be other reasons for for that irritation than just the answer. Yeah. Yeah. It's an interesting one, isn't it? Because part of me thinks this is not the first type of product that goes directly against somebody's skin. And so would they not have known ahead of time that this was a material that could cause some kind of irritation, but it does happen. And I think, you know, I'm not Facebook's fan by any stretch, but but it's done the right thing here. And I've I don't really have any any allergies specifically, except grapefruit. And but I did have an irritation once with one of the metal straps for the Apple Watch, which caught me off guard, but just switch it out. And what was the allergy? I have no idea. It was just a skin irritation that seemed to happen if I was a bit sweaty. So I'm guessing, you know, a similar thing with with the oculus here. But I have no problem with Facebook providing silicone inserts for people who are experiencing irritation with the foam one. A fifty seven hundred is a very small percentage, but it's it's a number of people and they deserve to have an option that doesn't irritate their face fully with that. What I'm not sure about is saying and will replace all future sales with the silicone insert, because I feel like now you're just going to have to send the foam one to the people with the silicone allergies or some some other option like providing an option for the small percentage of people that have the allergies. Good idea. Replacing it with something else that is a known allergen causing, I don't know, just doesn't make sense to me, I guess. Unnecessary emails. Yeah. Samsung has an event scheduled for August 11th, but unlike the Nothing Company, they haven't actually gone out doing interviews leaking themselves. What's going to happen? We just have leaks from blogs to guess what they will announce. Looks like a Galaxy Z Fold 3, Galaxy Z Flip 3, a couple of Galaxy Smartwatches, Buds 2. But Samsung did a blog post. Samsung mobile president, TM Co, made some official statements. And here's what he said. New foldable devices will have enhanced durability. All right, not a shocker. Samsung wants to reassure us that every version of their foldable devices gets better, especially after the debacle that was the first one. And this confirms that there will be new foldables. Not that we were doubting, but that's that's a confirmation. He also said Samsung will announce the first ever S Pen designed specifically for foldable phones. So stylus support for everybody. We got it for the Galaxy S. Now we've got it for the foldables. Good to know. And here's the one that's going to get some of you upset. Samsung will not announce a new Galaxy Note this year. That's a bold move to only disappoint fans of the note with this announcement, but at least gets their anxiety out of the way. And he said note features will come to other devices, which with Galaxy S and foldable, both supporting stylus now. Makes sense. I don't know, Nate, that sounds to me like maybe Samsung's paving the way for foldables to take the place of the note. Yeah, I mean, the note and the and the Galaxy S line, you know, they became increasingly similar as the sizes became quite comparable. And I think it makes sense to, you know, to possibly merge those whether that's spiritually or literally into one one product that suits everybody on the folding side of things. I've always felt that the Huawei did the folding design better, at least from my usage of it. So I'm excited to see what Samsung's doing with this. But specifically because slight time travel here, when I was at school, I had a pen that I could fold in half. And it was my favorite pen because I could bend it and put it in my pocket. So if Samsung is about to bring out the digital electronic version of my folding pen from school, I am interested. I doubt they are. That would be amazing if they're like, and the pen my dreams around. I just tie it into a knot if you want to. And you just mean, but that's a lot of the foldable stuff. I know for a lot of people, we're still in that in between mode where it's like, is this going to stick? What's that, you know, killer foldable design where we all can't imagine a life before that we're not there yet. We're getting close, though. Yeah, noted noted note fan, Darren Kitchen. Remember, he was ecstatic about the first note. He uses a foldable now, just saying like it's kind of the wave of the future. Before we move away from Samsung, we should note that starting Thursday, July 29th, Samsung will start taking orders for the 49 inch curved mini LED Odyssey Neo G9 gaming monitor. Just be ready to spend twenty five hundred dollars on it. Does have two thousand nits of brightness and a black level of zero point zero, zero, zero, four. Oh, thank God. So you're getting what you pay for. Imagine it was zero point zero for you. We cleared something up then, because in the in the running order, we have two thousand riots of brightness. And I was like, what the? What is a riot of brightness? That's my that was my typo in my read. That was great. It does sound good, though. It's that bright, Nate rioting over the brightness. Moving on now, Discord has launched the ability for any server with community features enabled to turn messages into threaded conversations. So when we're applying to a message, you can choose the create thread option and then you give the better name. Then it shows up in the sidebar. The name of any threaded topic also shows up in the list of channels under the channel and which exists. So threads auto archive after 24 hours of inactivity, though their boosted servers can keep them around for about a week. If they want, servers boosted through premium features can create private threads that won't show up in the channel list. So that lets you have non-public conversations without having to add everybody as a friend, for example. The feature will arrive on all servers by August 17th. I am very excited about this. I actually was just looking at our Discord, like, did we get it yet? No, we're going to get it. And I know, Nate, for text message, you use Discord as well. And do you also run into a desire for a true threaded view sometimes? Oh, yeah, all the time. I love I love threading. We have a pretty active community over there, like you guys do. And one minute, we're talking about someone who's asking for an MP3 of something I mentioned on a podcast several weeks ago. And the next minute, it's all about backups. And what else was so I'm talking about today? The old time machine, time capsules on Apple. It's like, it would be great to thread these. I'm a big fan of threading. Yeah. And I like the way they're implementing it. I'll have to try it to be sure. But it looks like the right way to do it. It seems pretty easy to see the threads, pretty easy to keep them out out of the way of the rest of the conversation without losing them. And we use Discord more and more for organization of stuff instead of Slack, which I know Discord wasn't built for. And sometimes it gets a little wonky because of that. But having threads is a big advantage there. Yeah, I mean, I fan of Discord. And that is the way that the DTNS team talks to each other primarily outside of the show, but I prefer Slack so much more. But I feel like this is just a way that Discord becomes more like Slack. So a couple of things happening as we're talking about them, one of which we'll talk about a lot more tomorrow. Alphabet announced their earnings. And the big headline coming out of that is YouTube ad sales past seven billion dollars. And apparently Alphabet just trounced all the estimates. Also, Twitter has acquired the team from Subscription News app brief. So those those are interesting things happening right now. We also have some other interesting things happening, sometimes not even in English. Explain, Dan Campos. Did you know that surgeons that grew up playing video games more than three hours per week make 37 percent fewer errors? Another way you can improve your performance is by listening to Noticias de Tecnologie Express, where you will get the most relevant headlines of the week in about five minutes. Noticias de Tecnologie Express available wherever you get your podcast. During Intel accelerated CEO Pat Gelsinger announced a new roadmap, including an annual cadence for releases until getting back on track as far as the cadence and a goal to retake the lead in processor design by 2025 and want to stop being the people with the bigger nanometer numbers. In fact, they're not even going to have nanometer numbers. Intel's changing its naming convention. The follow up to the 10 nanometer superfin will be called Intel 7. Now, that's not just a random number. The technical justification is that no names don't refer to the size of a transistor on a chip anyway. When you're talking about seven nanometers, it doesn't actually mean seven nanometers and broadly speaking, Intel's 10 nanometer chips offer comparable transistor density to seven nanometer chips from TSMC or Samsung and are at least competitive with AMD 7 nanometer Ryzen. So Intel 7 is expected to reach 10 to 15 percent improvement in performance per watt until seven based Alder Lake arrives in product by the end of this year and Sapphire Rapids chips for data centers in 2022. And it's meant to be compared with what other companies are calling their seven nanometer processors. Intel's upcoming seven nanometer chips will be called Intel 4. It's expected to reach 200 to 250 million transistors per square millimeter. And the verge compares that to TSMC's five nanometer node with 171.3 million. So it does have a reason to say this is really a four, not a seven. That will be followed in 2024 by Intel 3, which will also be a seven nanometer product and have an expected 18 percent performance per watt improvement. And then Intel 20 a is coming, which would be the first in what Intel is calling the angstrom era of semiconductors. So forget nanometers. We're on to angstrom. Hence the 20 20 a angstrom is smaller than a nanometer. 20 angstrom are two nanometers. Though the name Intel 28 does not refer to a specific measurement even so. Anyway, it'll be the first transistor architecture since 2011 not to use FinFET to using ribbon FET, which is Intel's first gate all around transistor. That design promises greater transistor density and smaller size and power via will mean that the chip is powered from the back for a more efficient overall design. Intel 20 a is planned for 2024 and the big headline Intel will make these chips for Qualcomm starting in 2024, adding Intel to Samsung and TSMC as Qualcomm's main chip suppliers. Intel 20 a will be followed by Intel 18 a in 2025. And that is when Gelsinger thinks Intel will retake the lead in semiconductor design, having the overall smallest, best, most transistors design. Nate, which part of this story attracts your attention the most? Do you think the bit that attracts me most is the bits that I understand, which is very little because this is obviously very, very confusing, not least having the Intel 10, which is not seven nanometer, which is seven nanometer, but the Intel seven is not seven nanometer. The way that I'm thinking about this, essentially, is that the smaller the number for now, the better performance per watt. Yes. And they're going from 10, then seven, then four, then three. So it's like a rocket takeoff. So think Bezos, think Blue Origin. And the smaller that number, the better the performance per watt. Once you get to zero, which there isn't one of, where basically you've got the most performance per watt, then you move into the Intel 20 a and so forth. And then the naming convention starts again. That's probably the simple way to think about it, but we don't have any other massive details in terms of how this is going to affect the competition with arm on a performance level on an application performance level. At this point, it's all about naming processes at this as far as I'm aware. Yeah. I mean, the power per watt or the performance per watt numbers are great. They look lovely. You know, we'll see what they actually are once the chips are released. And if they're released, Intel has a history lately of missing their marks. Gelsinger wants to change that, obviously, but they need to do it before we all go, OK, great. Intel's on a new cadence for sure. I think it's a great way of explaining it because what Intel was trying to say on their right is when we were calling ours a 10 nanometer and Samsung was calling there's a seven nanometer that made it sound like theirs was three better than ours. And it's not their seven nanometer process had about the same amount of transistors as our 10 nanometer process, certainly performance. We were Intel would argue they were better. So these they they're they're saying nobody was using these numbers in an accurate way anyway. So we're just going to abandon the pretense and just pick a number that compared like if they're calling their seven nanometers, then we're going to call our equivalent processor on performance a seven. And you know, since they're all marketing names anyway, I guess that's fine. And it makes nothing easier to understand like I'm sorry. But they try this because they're like, well, you're saying it's this and we're saying it's this and the numbers are different. And it's actually the same blah, blah, blah, blah. So they come out with this incredibly convoluted new way of describing and it still makes no sense as far as I'm concerned. But this is just what companies do, right? We had the same thing with pixels and these, you know, Giga was it? What was it called? Who did the Giga pixels? It wasn't a megapixel Giga pixel. Yeah, I remember that there was a phone that came out and they said, well, it's it's it's only seven. It's a seven ultra pixel. That's what it was. It was the ultra pixels. And that's equivalent to this many megapixels. And it's it's all marketing. It's all nonsense. The real proof is how well does it perform? Exactly. Right. I care about. And to me, that's why I don't mind. I don't even think this is confusing. I think you explained it quite well. Four is better than seven. And I'll I'll compare four when it comes out to all the other best processors and the other folks see what their performance is like. And then that will actually tell you whether it's better, better or not. And and I guess because none of these numbers, these numbers seemed like maybe they meant something before, but they really didn't. I'd rather them just be like, yeah, no, we're not even going to use nanometer anymore. Let's they're they're all imaginary numbers anyway. Why not? Yeah, that works for me. Well, ZD nets. Charlie Osborne notes were report by Blackberry's research and intelligence team released Monday that shows that malware developers are using languages like Go, D, Nim and Rust. Using unusual languages helps avoid signature based detection tools, obviously malware and slows down reverse engineering efforts by security researchers. You can also make malware cross compatible on target systems. So malware developers are using the languages to write droppers and loaders that evade detection and then also deploy more typical malware. Though some developers are rewriting malware entirely in new languages. The language Go in particular is being used by state sponsored groups and commodity malware developers. This is just a good to know. The next step in the arms race is that malware makers are changing the programming languages. And so now the signature checkers need to look for more. Keep up with the times. Yeah, yeah, basically. I mean, that's that's that's something that certainly is interesting and good to know if you're in the security game, right? Would you like to talk about security when it comes to baseball? Yes, indeed, I would. Well, Tom, I'm glad because I've got good news for you. ESPN reports that major league baseball will start testing an encrypted wireless communication device by Pitchcom starting on August 3rd. Testing starts with the low a West minor league first. You might be saying, well, OK, what is it? It's a wristband transmitter for the catcher, the catcher as in the catcher on the baseball team with nine buttons to signal desired pitch and location, which then sends an encrypted audio signal to receivers that can squeeze into the pitchers cap and also the catcher's helmet. So they're talking to each other. The receivers use bone conduction technology to be as under the radar as possible. This is baseball, after all. But there are some restrictions, quote, players found to be wearing a receiver while batting will be ejected, only the active catcher and no other players or coaches is allowed to use the transmitter. A backup transmitter is provided, but it must remain in the carrying case during games and if players and coaches need to confer because of an issue with the device, they can notify the umpires and not be charged amount visit. So, you know, again, this is baseball. They're trying to keep it, you know, as locked on as possible. The wireless MLB transmitter will be tested on such teams as the Modesto Nuts, the Inland Empire 66ers and the Lake Elsinore Storm. Now, I just wanted to make the Intel naming conventions seem less confusing to you, Nate, by bringing up a bunch of baseball terms that I don't know whether you do or do not hang with here. Oh, I think you know very well that I do not hang with and I'm wildly confused by all of those words. I understood ESPN and everything after that just was this like fuzzy garbled noise. Well, so you've seen a baseball game before, right? I sat in bars in America. You know that the catcher and the pitcher are communicating to each other and trying to confuse the batter. That's yeah, I mean, at the, you know, let's step it back. You know, you know, there's a pitcher throwing a ball to the catcher. I know that there is a I can tell what a pitcher is because they are pitching the ball. And I know there's a bath. OK, yeah, I didn't know there's somebody catches the ball. The catcher didn't know that new to me. Yeah, very important. So there you go. See, that's the important part. The catcher usually puts fingers down to tell the pitcher which pitch to throw. And now they're going to use the catcher. So they're, you know, clever. And now they're going to use wireless communication where the catcher won't even say anything. He'll just press a button on his wrist. Audio in the pitchers here will go like throw the fastball or probably you probably just say fastball like that. And then and then that cuts down on anybody and the batters, you know, because that's trying to steal, right? Being like, I know what they're doing because you won't see anything. I have suddenly become more interested in sport. Yeah, our work here is done. It is. Good stuff. This is so cool. Yeah, I think I don't know. I mean, it's just it's baseball technology. What are you going to do? But but I love it. Yeah, it's it's it's where the technology should go. There is any of it. Ever a place for this, right? It could have done this years ago, but hey, better late than never, I suppose. And let's check out the mailbag. Well, many of you. Oh, boy, a few of you really felt it was important to know it based on our conversation yesterday about Ziggy now being a wake word from Amazon, that Amazon's new name of Ziggy could be a reference to Ziggy from Quantum Leap. Yes, it could. It could very well be. Thank you, everyone, for reminding us of that fact. All right. We also got an email from Stealth Dave, who wrote now that Pete or Phil. Sorry, I took too long to write this email. I can't remember. It has used up the one time, please say my name method of getting your name mentioned on DTNS because they wrote in and said, hey, can you say my name? And I'm like, all right, we'll do it this one time. It's not going to work for anybody else. Well, Stealth Dave said, I'd like to suggest other ways of getting your name mentioned on DTNS. Become a patron at patreon.com slash DTNS. Already a patron? Give them a raise. They deserve it. And when you do, you can get more content, especially if you upgrade your support tier from associate producer to co-executive producer like I did, for example. Seriously, though, it's been a long time coming. You guys produce an amazing show that's entertaining and incredibly informative. I work in technology and I've lost track of all the times you've made me look good at my job just by listening to your show. Thanks for all your hard work. Sincerely, Stealth Dave. PS, yes, this is a shameless ploy to get my name mentioned on DTNS. Ah, but you still deserve the raise. You got it, Stealth Dave. You did it. By the way, his name was Phil. It was Phil. That was the other one. Now he's got his name on there twice. There you go. There you go, Phil and Stealth Dave. But yes, really good points and appreciate the note. If you have feedback for us, if you have questions, comments, something that we might talk about in a future show or talked about in the past, please do send that our way. Feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. We read every single email and we appreciate all of them. Also, shout out to patrons at our master and grand master levels. Today, they include Matthew Stevens, John and Becky Johnston, and Chris Benito. Also, we've been talking about patrons and you know what we'd like to do? Extend a special thanks to Paul Reese, who is one of our top lifetime supporters for DTNS. Top lifetime supporters. It's a pretty special place to be. Thank you for all the years of support, Paul. Yay, Paul. Hey, Paul. Paul. Paul. Paul. Paul. Paul. He's everywhere. Paul. Also thanks to Nate. Listen, I mean, OK. Listen, Paul and Roy, I'm sure they'd get along great. Speaking of getting along, we always get along with you, Nate Langston. Let folks know where they can keep up with your work. Well, there is something that was mentioned on the show earlier today that I'm not allowed to talk about yet, but I will be allowed to talk about by the end of the week and it will be on my podcast text message on Sunday. UKTekShow.com is where I really hope you'll go and give us a subscribe so you can hear it. I guarantee it will be of interest. Oh, it's got the baseball wireless transm... No, it's probably not. Yeah. Yeah, not that one. Do it, Nate. How you doing? Yeah. Well, we're live on this show, Monday through Friday at 4.30 p.m. Eastern, 2030, UTC, and trust me, when Nate drops the knowledge, we'll be talking about it on this show. Find out more at DailyTechniqueShow.com. Join us live if you can. We'll be back tomorrow with Scott Johnson. Talk to you next.